James Baker, the Bush family confidant charged by Congress with devising a new strategy for the war on Iraq, has warned there are no quick fixes to the rapidly deteriorating situation.

On one of the deadliest days for US forces in Iraq since the beginning of the war, the White House yesterday came under renewed pressure from Republicans for a change of strategy in Iraq.

But Mr Baker, the co-chair of a study group on Iraq, warned it was unrealistic to expect an immediate solution to the problems. "There is no magic bullet for the situation in Iraq. It is very, very difficult," he said in a speech to the World Affairs Council, in Houston, on Tuesday. "Anybody who thinks that somehow we're going to come up with something that is going to totally solve the problem is engaging in wishful thinking."

The Bush administration has faced growing pressure in recent days to abandon its strategy of maintaining US troops in Iraq until Iraqi forces can take over. Pressure for such changes deepened yesterday after the Pentagon confirmed nine US soldiers and a marine had been killed by roadside bombs and under Iraqi fire on Tuesday. The casualties raise the US death toll for October to 69, making this one of the deadliest months for US forces since January 2005.

The administration has also faced increasing doubts about the wisdom of its strategy at home after Mr Baker indicated that his bipartisan commission would recommend radical changes in US policy when it released its report. The commission is not expected to report until several weeks after the November 7 mid-term elections, but it is believed Mr Baker will call for a phased withdrawal of US forces.

Until now that approach has been stiffly resisted by the White House, which has condemned calls for a gradual drawing down of US forces as "cut and run" policy.

But the administration's strategy of training Iraqi forces to take over has become untenable. Many US army officers appointed to serve as advisers to Iraqi forces viewed the training programme as a joke, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Meanwhile, leading Republicans have become increasingly vocal in expressing their doubts about the war.

Senator John Warner, the party's authority on defence issues, warned that Iraq was adrift. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a Senator from Texas, this week admitted that the situation in Iraq had descended into chaos - contradicting repeated assertions from the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and other neocons, about progress in Iraq. "I would say that it's 25% that you never hear the good things that are happening, but it's 75% that it's chaos over there," she told the Dallas Morning News.

Despite the dissent the White House has given little sign it is ready for a policy shift. In Washington the press secretary, Tony Snow, denied the deaths of 10 soldiers necessitated change. "The strategy is to win." He also played down suggestions that the Bush administration would consider ending its ban on talks with Iran and Syria. In interviews Mr Baker had said the US should call on those countries to help end the violence in Iraq. "We'd be very happy for them not to foment terror," Mr Snow said. "But it certainly doesn't change our diplomatic stance towards either."